


Not This Time (Not Ever Again)

by wrothmothking



Category: Alien: Isolation (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 02:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrothmothking/pseuds/wrothmothking
Summary: "I wanted Amanda Ripley to have closure," are his last words. But all she has is death: hers, dozens of times, becoming as normal for her as falling asleep, his, once and horrible and permanent, and such a vast number of people who'd lived on the station she can't bear to consider, lest she want to invite a panic attack.
Relationships: Amanda Ripley/Christopher Samuels
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Not This Time (Not Ever Again)

She didn't do anything wrong. Samuels didn't do anything wrong.

It should've worked.

It didn't matter.

An android's up. Amanda sees him on the tracker, puts it to sleep and stuffs it back in her pocket so the beeping doesn't give her away. Strains her hearing for the Working Joe voice, something she knows will feature heavily in her nightmares if she ever finds somewhere safe enough to rest or, better, gets off this damned station. It's insulting Seegson thought these drones comparable to Samuels. The thought brings rage and grief slamming into her, and she wonders how she could've become so fond of him in so little time, time wrought with neverending crises and neverending distance from one another. He was kind to her. He cared for her as a person who'd been hurt, who'd lost a part of herself and been forced to go on without for over a decade, before having even met her.

He'd died for her.

Impossible, not to return such sentiment.

But she was angry, too, with him for thinking it necessary, with the ghosts behind the line, "You talk like I've had an actual life."

Caught up in her thoughts as she is, Amanda still puts together the Joe's route. It's simple: a slow circuit of the three interconnected rooms, interrupted by pauses to spout advertising tidbits at empty space. Vents may end in the first room, but a mere couple yards was all that stood between her and...well, what _had_ been a quiet, hostile-free hallway.

She waits for him to come back into the room.

"You always know a Working Joe," he says, practically on top of her, and though she's never known an android to crawl in a vent after her, she doesn't brush aside the instinct to hold her breath.

He moves along. She clambers out.

Or tries to.

Her foot slides off the edge, slamming her belly into the sharp metal. She can't help a gasp. But the pain of the bruising tissue is nothing to the terror, which sets her heart rabbiting through her ears and cold, heavy numbness oozing into her limbs.

The android 'napping' in the doorway bunk sits up. Its terrible white eyes bear into hers. Holding the contact, Amanda slowly eases herself back down to the relative safety beneath the floorboards.

Another Joe--likely the patrolling one--swings into the room. Amanda slams her elbow into the side trying to get down too fast, and the distraction makes her freeze for the second it takes the android to reach her.

He grabs her by the throat, lifts her, and slams her into the wall. His one-handed grip cuts off her airway, makes her choke. She swings her maintenance jack wildly, missing twice before connecting.

Two more blows, and he drops her. Panting, she reaches for an EMP--and finds a noisemaker.

It's then she knows it's over.

Death's become something of a friend, but like hell is she gonna make it easy on them.

Her stun baton stuns the first one, and she's half-beaten him out of functionality when the second grabs her. Amanda breaks from him near effortlessly, rewards him with two shotgun shots to the face. A third shot takes out number two, but numbers three and four are already through the door. 

* * *

She wakes up standing over the android Samuels killed. Had his fellows not just squeezed the life from her, Amanda'd've felt bad for losing her meal on him. The acid burning her throat, the acrid taste lingering on her tongue, those she figures to be beyond sufficient punishment for her fumble.

And then she remembers Samuels, and the same misery that's haunted her for the last, terribly long twenty minutes assaults her once more.

Until she hears Ricardo's voice in her ear, reminding her of her place in the sequence of events she's already gone through.

Samules is alive.

Amanda powers up the elevator. She hasn't the time; she's got to stop him. Somehow.

But should she? The thought haunts her.

Is speaking with Apollo necessary? Well, yes, in that answers would be nice, in that the androids need to stand down. She might be able to survive sneaking around them, but Ricardo's in a proven-insecure area, surrounded by the corpses of people he knew. Bringing him with her doesn't seem an option; she needs him to direct her from terminal, two pairs of feet make much more noise than one, and Samuels would have difficulty protecting just himself against a horde.

Of course, Apollo may not listen to her, like it wouldn't listen to Samuels and all the people who'd lived here and depended on it, rendering Samuels's sacrifice moot. Just another, wonderful person breaking an unspoken promise by leaving her life forever. For nothing.

There must be another way.

The doors open. Amanda makes sure the EMPs are where she thinks they are, crafts another while she's at it, and sets out for the death trap Samuels'd made for himself at a brisk jog.

A synthetic sits up as she passes it. She drops an EMP and fastens her pace to a sprint. Clearing the second room, the ones in the third are already standing, and she barely ducks down into a crouch to dodge grasping hands. Soon as she's out the door, tossing back another EMP, she slams open the rewiring access point and disables door access.

"Ripley?"

"Samuels?"

"Persistent, aren't they? I'm glad you're alright."

"Me too," she says, distracted. "About you, I mean."

As before, Samuels explains his plan to her. Amanda only pays half a mind, focused on his body language and line of sight. She needs to get in there, but if she alarms him, he'll duck passed her reach too fast, leaving her to bang on the glass and watch him die, again.

The final door opens. He looks up at her, startled. Her last EMP rests in hand, yet he pays it no (apparent) mind.

"What if it rejects you?"

"Amanda?" he asks, shoulders hunched, gaze darting to the reformatting chamber. There's guilt, there, mixed with uncertainty, the both of them buried by resolve.

She takes one step forward, he takes one back.

"You wouldn't listen to me last time, but, Samuels, don't do this. We can find another way."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't hate you for bringing me here."

"I..."

"It's okay, Samuels. If nothing else, I feel closer to my mother than I have in a-in a long time."

"Ripley, there's no evidence that-"

"'Amanda' was fine, Samuels." She's not touching that line of conversation. Bringing up Mom had not been her intent. "Don't you think I'd have a better chance of getting out of here alive _with_ you?"

"The androids are slaughtering people, it would go against my programming to let it go on. Rip-_Amanda_, they _chased_ you in here. The thought of them catching you, it's...I will not allow that to happen."

'It's already happened,' she bites back.

Instead, she says, "Samuels, we don't need to save the station, we need to evacuate it. Sevastopol's falling apart. Synthetics or no synthetics, it's lost. Interfacing with Apollo directly isn't worth the risk when there's so many more ways for us all to die. Samuels, we--_I_, need you, it's too big for me to handle by myself and Ricardo's not an engineer and-and I don't want you to die, okay?"

"You speak as if I've had an actual life."

"You have."

"Thank you, Amanda." Samuels relaxes, not retreating when she again moves towards him. "Though if you're 'Amanda', I suppose I'd be 'Christopher'."

"Let's save these people, Christopher, and let's not die to do it, okay?"

Chrisopher smiles. "As you like."


End file.
